Media get OS deal all wrong again!

Sky Sports, the Guardian and the Daily Mirror have all run stories today suggesting that the tax payer will foot the bills for medical staff, cleaners and the majority of stewards at the Olympic Stadium.

The claims follow the release of the agreement by the London Legacy Development Corporation yesterday which reveals more details of the previously confidential deal between the LLDC and West Ham for the rental of the Stadium.

These headlines are very misleading as the tax payer will not be further funding the stadium and the bills will actually be paid by stadium operator Vinci on behalf of stadium owner E20 Stadium LLP which is owned by both the LLDC and Newham council.

The Stadium is expected to make a very conservative £200,000 profit per year so all running costs are included and not paid by the tax payer. West Ham will pay a rent of £2.5m rent but pay further bonuses on Premier league positions above tenth place.

The club will also pay extra if they win the FA Cup, Europa League or the Champions league plus extra cash if they qualify for Europa League or Champions League. The rent and bonuses are also index linked meaning it will increase with inflation over the 99 year term.

When you add the Stadium naming rights, the LED wrap and pitch side advertising, catering and pouring profits and renting the stadium out to Rugby, NFL American Football, music concerts plus other possible renters then it doesn’t take a rocket science to work out that the tax payer will be in profit with regards to operating the system.

This is another attempt by the media to blame West Ham over a deal it won fair and square and try to get London tax payers riled up upset that they are footing the bill for us to play in a stadium that no-one wanted.

About Sean Whetstone

I am Season Ticket Holder in West stand lower at the London Stadium and before that, I used to stand in the Sir Trevor Brooking Lower Row R seat 159 in the Boleyn Ground and in the Eighties I stood on the terraces of the old South Bank. I am a presenter on the West Ham Podcast called MooreThanJustaPodcast.co.uk. A Blogger on WestHamTillIdie.com a member of the West Ham Supporters Advisory Board (SAB), Founder of a Youtube channel called Mr West Ham Football at http://www.youtube.com/MrWestHamFootball,
I am also the associate editor here at Claret and Hugh.
Life Long singer of bubbles! Come on you Irons!
Follow me at @Westhamfootball on twitter

The same old lazy journalism. if they bothered to do the maths and add together the annual rent being paid, plus money from catering, the cache that a PL club in residence will add to the value of naming rights plus the lost income of the 100k of free tickets each year the effective rent could be £10m pa. Let’s not forget who actually stopped the club from buying the stadium when we would have had to pay these costs – Spurs and the Orient.

You will always have these “waste of tax payers money” “I’m going to complain to my mp” types. Sad obnoxious bitter people with no real purpose in life. They will hold on to a cause like this. They will spend their entire lives worrying more about what other people are doing or getting away with than what they are doing themselves. Not a good cause, not a force for good, but a cause to bring down anyone who is better off than them. It’s born out of envy or jealousy and it will give birth to destroy them in the end. It will eat away at them from the inside out.

From a purely commercial view this seems a good deal. From reading various articles West Ham submitted the best deal over rivals. A thorough procurement process appears to have been carried out. If the rivals have knowledge that this process was circumvented then they should produce the evidence.

Regardless that the stadium is a public entity they entered into a commercial contract with West Ham and therefore details of that contract should be protected at all costs. One of the reasons leaked details can derail a great outcome is under cutting by other stadiums. With knowledge of the Olympic stadiums (OS) bargaining position other stadiums can undercut future positions by the OS. For West Ham, their position may be undermined as others get a view of any value adds that may have been offered to the OS. Yes, value adds are part of the procurement process.

The only downside I can see from the deal is that all parties did not do a great job in selling it, otherwise known as stakeholder management. In such a high profile commercial outcome such as this, a significant amount of stakeholder management within government, media, local councils, other rivals and the general publi should have prevented the prolonged scrutiny. Public / private partnerships are fraught with difficulties such as this and require substantial influencing and communication thoughout the entire process.

It is a good deal for the tax payer & British athletics… thousands of people have been given work for many years boosting the economy. The country now has a wonderful stadium to use & all this after we hosted the best Olympic games in modern times.

Someone has not done a very good job getting this message across to the public, if handled correctly a few years ago all of this drama could have been nipped in the bud